


The Devil, Too, Works Miracles

by TheBitterKitten



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Will Graham, Betrayal, Canon Compliant, Dark Will Graham, Emotional Manipulation, Episode: s01e13 Savoureux, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Hannibal is Hannibal, Hannibal is a terrible friend, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, POV Will Graham, Someone Help Will Graham, Will Graham Doesn’t Know He Loves Hannibal, Will Graham Has Encephalitis, Will is perhaps angry, dark times for hannigram
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26589241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBitterKitten/pseuds/TheBitterKitten
Summary: But such are these kinds of miracles: he traded away everything for the sweetgold of recognition, the favor of feeding his dogs,  and companionable dinners.And now Will is alone.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 15





	The Devil, Too, Works Miracles

The hurricane of his head is perched atop a body that is a burning construct of agony. 

Wholesale devastation lays waste to his skull, roars in his ears, drowns out all feeling all sound all thought except one: _I killed my daughter._ Not his daughter, not really — _so similar we all could have been family; should have made a family of our disparate parts and be bound by our spilt blood_ — his daughter all the same. 

That courageous windswept creature of tense instinct and perception and hope, the flashing lure in the darkness, now dead because of his fear and he  _ate_ her. Ate her ear whole, swallowed it down like a indiscriminate capful of pills — _an_ _atheist’s prayer against wrenching sucking pain_ — Why her ear? 

Will looks up from his mud-black feet and the splintered wood of his porch to the tires crunching on his driveway. A car engine shuts off. Hannibal is here; he’ll know what to do, how to stop this. Will doesn’t feel relief because he can’t feel anything at all. His gaze clutches all the same at the man walking towards him. He says things, and Hannibal responds. Will takes his warm and outstretched hand, but he doesn’t hear anything, doesn’t know what either of them are saying, because the only thought in his head is  _ Why her ear?_

There’s a blanket around him, but Hannibal is spinning around, spinning out in a grief that swarms Will—  _please don’t leave me, I’ll freeze_ —  and he’s covering his face with his shaking hand. Even his Hannibal can’t fix what he’s done. So Will goes somewhere far away, where his body does as it is bid and he doesn’t have to witness it; would die and let be what is. 

He continues to exist despite himself, despite his will, contrary to anything any merciful god would allow to exist. His lungs fill with air and his blood flows easily.Will is somewhere far away from Zeller and Price pulling fingerprints from his sink with hardened, professional faces. Far away from Bev looking him straight in the eye. Far away from his poor sweet dogs led into hell on a prison van, from Winston’s sorrowful gaze asking  _Why her ear?_

He endures being stripped and catalogued, but Beverly demanding his explanation is a full-on Passion. She commands the resignation and surrender of his soul to whatever comes after. His body is only now evidence against him—  _she fought me and I broke her, I killed her_ —  is a battered and torn canvas of so many defensive scratches and bruises, so much blood... he is faint. He admits, acknowledges the evidence _—please, please just_ _ let me fade—_ and focuses on keeping his knees locked and upright. He should not exist, cannot exist with having killed Abigail. He is a mass of swarming flies, waiting to be scattered. Would beg them to scatter him.

But Jack tells him there are fishing lures with human parts in them, and he stirs. It’s too much, but not enough.  _ Why her ear?_

Will finds Gideon in his ashes; the broken thumb of his hand, and escapes. 

He reaches the safe haven of their study, watches him read at his desk. Hannibal is bowed over a book, cradling it — _the line of his canted shoulders could be a dancer’s could be a_ —  as if it has all the answers to Will and his problems. Hannibal is saying things, but it’s... false — _spin me fool’s gold spin me a dream tell me this isn’t what it is_ — There’s a wall that wasn’t there before, something he can’t parse. Hannibal’s words are secretive and sly, have the bitter sting of omission, that condescending slide of double-meaning. Doubt creeps in around the edges of his burning mind. 

Will has to know. Hannibal drives. Will drifts, memorizing in spite of himself these last — _why are they the last do they really have to be the last I could love you_ — moments of themselves; just them together, pointed to one purpose. — _has it even ever been us_

And Hannibal is the Devil Himself ensconced in His pit and reveling in dark flames— _I_ _don’t believe in god, cannot exist with a god who allows—_. Dr. Hannibal Lecter can only be the Devil. All, all, _—all of this, all of my agony—_ for? The stolen gun is a heavy and ponderous weight in his hand, is a sisyphean weight in his hand but the trigger isn’t pulling and Will can only tremble at this terrible miracle of his friend _,_ his confidante, the one who knew him, his—Why are they, do they have to be enemies now? _You fed my dogs I entrusted them to you we were sacred I trusted you I believed you_

_we were sacrosanct_

_We—_

This razed and salted earth of Will cannot possibly be only for Hannibal’s curiosity. Can’t. This desolation, his devouring suffering— Hannibal is his  _is his friend, is his_ —  and all the rest cannot be for mere observation. — _God must laugh when the roof caves in on a worship service, and Hannibal must be laughing now_ —  A moment devoid of feeling — all Will  _is_ is feeling— he pulls the trigger of the gun.

He sees Jack’s face as he’s falling, crunching against the cabinets next to Abigail’s bloodstain, all that’s left.—  _ See? Do you see the Devil laughing beside you?_

There’s absolutely nothing to him now. 

Will is an event horizon sitting in a prison jumpsuit on a bare mattress; a façade behind which lies the consuming void. The hurricane has dissipated, beaten away by anti-inflammatory drugs and a stay in a hospital where the nurses didn’t try to look him in the eye and smile. A stay where the nurses avoided his gaze, and reminded themselves sternly to harm none; the encephalitis and the shattered shoulder and defensive wounds in front of them are only a collection of broken pieces they must make whole. 

He’s the charred corpses of trees after a forest fire; nothing living remains. 

Will is still, and silent. Left only the endless stream of his thoughts to comfort him here in the stone walls of his grave. But they’re Hannibal’s thoughts. Hannibal’s voice. In his head and all the time, now. 

He doesn’t remember when, or how it started; doesn’t remember a lot of fucking things, actually. Will’s internal dialogue is produced in that sibilant cadence, still soothing, after... everything. He retches against it, would tear himself open from the ears or from the mouth and vomit it out if only he could muster the energy. 

Will would do a lot of things, if he had the energy, but he’s been far past the point of anything since the kitchen. Jack’s face as he had shot him is a ringing condemnation: resolute and no fear, just putting the rabid thing down. 

Hannibal had so carefully, so sweetly stripped him of everyone, of Jack and Alana and Beverly; so quietly that Will had helped him do it. He hadn’t been certain of so many things but bedrock that would benevolently crush him, a sword held aloft against his enemies, and the incontrovertible god of evidence. 

But such are these kinds of miracles: all are lost to him now, turned against him, given away freely in favor of... of feeding his dogs,and the sweetgold of recognition, and companionable dinners—  _Why her ear? It’s enough to convince and not enough to—_

There had been a warm hand in his, facing the end of the world; a man by his side. Hannibal on his side, until he suddenly wasn’t. His absence is a wretched and suppurating thing.

Hannibal had spun him a jasmine-scented dream, had held out Eris’ golden apple in the palm of his hand, had moved his hand and shook the firmaments of the earth. Had made himself the very earth Will stood upon. Hannibal had warned Will of Scylla even as he, laughing, had been Charybdis, that swirling maw in the sea. Will had drowned happily. 

Will takes a breath, no different from any of the others that have filtered through his lungs. It’s just a breath, but the void is now not a void. It has become the violent and reaving space between flat abandonment and calculated betrayal that is named Reckoning. 

Since this is to be the end of them: since this  is what Hannibal had wanted all along instead of Will’s friendship, instead of his understanding and instead of the possibility of a life with each other in it... Will, too, will reave, but nothing will survive him. Nothing will linger broken, gasping on hard ground. He will destroy and he will seduce; he will scatter a path of gardenia and foxgloves and rose petals and lead Hannibal but softly to his total ruin. Will is going to lay a consuming waste against the firmaments of what could have been heaven; he will excoriate what might have been life itself. 

Hannibal will not find a puppet here in the hospital for the criminally insane, though he may see it before him. He will not find a broken man drinking from the river Lethe, lost to forgetfulness. When Hannibal looks, and he will look— they are bound by spilt blood and recognition and no stronger chain exists— Hannibal will find his own deserved pain, his own bloodied teeth on the ground. He will find Will’s black hatred and ecstatic joy gorging themselves on Hannibal’s agonies and Hannibal will find absolutely no mercy. 

He hears hoof-beats on the concrete and rises to meet them. 

The man stares at him through the bars of Will’s grave. His form is a Wendigo made of dark and swarming flies. Will is going to crush each and every one between his fingers until nothing remains but gore and seeping blood.

“Hello, Will.”

“Hello, Dr. Lecter.”


End file.
